1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for managing virtual addresses of blade servers in a data center.
2. Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
Blade computers are increasingly being used to run critical applications that require a high level of redundancy and fault tolerance. Multiple blade computers are typically installed in complex data centers. Blade computers in a data center communicate through data communications networks and storage networks according to network adapter addresses assigned by the manufacturer of the network adapter. These addresses are typically static and unchangeable by a system administrator. Because the manufacturer-assigned addresses of the network adapters of a blade computer are typically unknown until a blade computer is installed and discovered in the data center, systems administrators are unable to pre-configure various data communications and storage network settings that involve network adapter addresses.